


Home Coming

by Derae



Category: Dragon Age: Origins
Genre: F/M, Mentions of Rape
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-28
Updated: 2019-02-28
Packaged: 2019-11-06 22:41:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,229
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17948504
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Derae/pseuds/Derae
Summary: With her Father safe at home and the threats to he Alienage gone for the time being, Kallian Tabris decides to fess up and tell Zevran the story of how she got to where she is now





	Home Coming

**Author's Note:**

> My writing ability is so rusty I'm sorry.   
> I also imagine my Tabris to be an 18 year old streetwise spitfire of a girl who is a few months older than Shianni and is super protective of her to the point where it's 'You hurt Shianni you die.'

He watched her catching up with her family and friends, laughing and celebrating. Both mourning what they lost because of Lohgain’s perverse actions but celebrating what they’d kept.

Here, in the Denerim alienage she wasn’t just his Warden, here, she was just Kallian Tabris a friend, a defender, a cousin, and a daughter.

Before her rampage, before she was running through the slaver’s routes gutting everyone without stopping, dancing around blades and bringing hers to their deaths. Before her rage, her cousin, Shianni had said something that caught his interest. How could it not?

It made him wonder just how much he knew about her, he’d told her of Rinna, but she had never told him that she had once been a bride.

He replayed the conversation in his head:

_“A wedding! So you do have a secretive side to you after all!”_

_“It didn’t work out.”_

_“Oh? Did you leave him at the alter?”_

_“…He died” a pained look crossed her face._

_“Oh… I’m sorry…I don’t know what to say…”_

_“We’ll talk about it later,” she had said before turning back to Shianni as she told her the problems plaguing the alienage._

Lost in his thoughts he barely noticed her sit down next to him holding a bottle of wine her cousin had undoubtedly nicked from the local store. It would seem that stealing was a trait that ran in the family.

“Well, it’s later,” Kallian opened up as she bit the cork on the bottle before jerking her head and spitting it off somewhere in the darkness.

“Indeed, though I wasn’t sure if now was the best time to talk about it,” he responded, “it looked like it had brought you a lot of pain, and as I’ve said before, I’ll accept only what you give me.”

She huffed a laugh, “No, Zev, you have a right to know, especially since you told me about Rinna… Now where to begin…”

She took a swig of the wine and passed it to him and he drank from it, “Let’s start from the beginning: So you know that in regards to marriage, it’s tradition for us to have arranged marriages right?”

“Indeed, such as they are.”

“I hated the idea but watching my mother and father and seeing how happy they were, I wasn’t *that* put off by the idea. But my father was more of a pacifist and would simply hope for the best…  
My mother on the other hand, was a spitfire and incredibly clever rogue. She taught me all she knew so that I’d be able to help out my own family when the time came… But she died protecting Shianni and I from shems. She’d told us to run back to the alienage and not look back. So we did, and she never followed us home. We found out the next day that she had been cut down… That event made me realize, that the world wasn’t safe, especially for us elves and that we would have to do everything we possibly could to survive.”

She took back the bottle of wine and took another drink, “So! I began dressing up as a boy whenever I thought I’d be encountering shems, I wore boys clothes and smeared my face with dirt whenever I left the alienage to go shopping in the market place, with of course, the five-finger discount,” here she wiggled her fingers and he couldn’t help but grin, “when my chest started to develop and my voice started to change, I took to binding my chest and lowering my voice to make sure I still looked and sounded like a boy with dirt smeared all over his face. I hated the idea of an arranged marriage, but I hated the idea of having my purity stolen by disgusting shems more. I also didn’t want to disappoint my father… he had such hopes for me…”

He recalled the old man whose arms she had rushed into after dropping her daggers, whose chest she cried tears of relief into.

“Allow me to say, but you would have made an excellent Crow,” he found himself saying. A woman who could play the part of a man and a woman? That was talent very hard to come by.

She stuck her tongue out at him playfully, “I’d rather not, a friend once told me that the retirement package sucked. Ah, so where was I? Oh yes, I was a daddy’s girl through and through, I minded my manners around others, as he’d taught me from his days serving in Bann Rodolf’s estate.  
He became someone well respected even in Highever, which is where he’d found my fiance… Nelaros…” her face took a downward turn here but he did not want to interrupt.

“When we first met, it was after that piece of shit Vaughan strutted into the alienage with his cronies looking for women to grab, and because it was my wedding day, of course I was dressed in all my finery, not a dirt smudged boy, though when his eyes landed on me, I did feel like I was covered in dirt. I tried to be cordial as my father had taught me, but he wouldn’t leave. So Shianni took a bottle and smashed it into the back of his head, knocking him out. We so were sure after that we’d never see him again, and so Soris and I went off to go have a chat with our fiances… Nelaros was kind, and when I flirted with him about how my nerves disappeared when I saw him, he said that he’d 'spend every waking moment learning to make me happy', and who wouldn’t start to fall in love with someone who said that line and meant every word? From just those words, I could see it, I could see myself starting a family and living a happy life with him.

“But… It wasn’t to be. Vaughan showed up again with guards as well as his lackeys in tow, and took us from the wedding, I tried to negotiate with him, he liked my looks so maybe… maybe he’d spare the others if I agreed to go with him. But… he didn’t. I was knocked out and in a sense, yes, I suppose I did leave Nelaros at the alter,” he watched her laugh self deprecatingly. 

“When I came too, the other bride, Valora, Shianni and the other brides maids, Nola and Lana were there, Lana was scared and praying to the Maker… I remember that well ‘Maker keep us, Maker protect us.’ Over and over, Nola was also panicking, Valora wanted to 'just wish for the best' and I wanted to slap her. Only Shianni, and I were not willing to simply roll over and let them have their way with us. But the guards who came to ‘escort us to Vaughan’s little party’ were well armed guards, they cut Lana down as she cried out ‘Stay away from us!’ to make an example of her, to break our spirits. They took the others first, the head guard told them to that Vaugnan liked the way I looked and wanted to save me for last. Shortly after the bulk of them had left… Soris showed up and grabbed the attention of the last two guards before sliding me a sword. I dispatched them with relative ease. Soris said that he and Nelaros had gotten swords from Duncan, the Grey Warden when Nelaros lost it and got angry at everyone who wanted to simply ‘hope for the best’ apparently Duncan couldn’t come because Grey Wardens couldn’t ‘get involved with politics.’” She snarled and took an angry drink from the bottle before passing it back to him.

“But I’ll get to that later, my heart soared when I heard Soris say that. Soris told us that Nelaros was keeping watch for more guards so Soris and I viciously fought our way through the arl’s estate only to watch Nelaros get cut down in front of us, and as his body fell, so too did the crumbling pieces of a future lost and a ring rolled from one of his pockets, a ring intended for me... I tore through the remaining guards with ease, and then we reached Vaughan’s room… Shianni was laying on the floor, blood flowing down her thighs, my vision turned red and Soris had to pull me off of Vaugnan just as I was about to continue to mutilate his corpse. I spat on it as Soris went to check on the others, Valora was fine, but Nola couldn’t stop crying, and was cut down as well. Shianni looked up at me, battered and broken, the life drained from her eyes as she asked me if I killed them… ‘Like dogs Shianni, like dogs.’ Valora and I did what we could to clean her up as Soris kept watch until we were ready to go home. Shianni didn’t want anyone to know, Valora said she’d be fine, because Shianni’s strong. I wanted to slap her, but this wasn’t the time. I took point as we left the arl’s estate and returned to the alienage. I wore a challenging scowl covered in blood as we walked.

“When we returned to the alienage, I sent Soris away to go hide and had Shianni take refuge at my home, and was telling Valendrian what happened when the guards showed up. Covered in blood and gore with daggers in hand I accepted full responsibility. Just as they were about to take me into custody, Duncan spoke up and conscripted me: you did whatever it took to complete your mission, the Grey Wardens need someone like you. And then my life in the alienage was over. I went to say my good byes, when I told my father goodbye he told me that he had dreams of grandchildren and family gatherings, and I didn’t have the heart to tell him that I did too, and when I went inside I almost slapped Valora again, she seemed chipper, probably because she wasn’t the one who’d lost so much. When I saw Shianni, we launched ourselves into each others arms and cried, we cried for what happened to her, we cried for a future cut down before our very eyes, we cried for our lost innocence. We cried until we couldn’t cry any more and it came time for me to leave.”

“I see… Forgive me for asking but why did you seem angry about Duncan my dear Warden?”

“Don’t tell Alistair, he worships the man, but I…hated Duncan. Duncan was there when Vaughan showed up guards in tow, Duncan was there as I was knocked out, Duncan was there as we were stolen from our wedding. And a few days into our trip to Ostagar, something occurred to me: Grey Wardens need to do whatever it takes to ensure the success of a mission. Duncan had tried to recruit my mother twenty years before and Duncan knew my mother had passed her training down to me: Duncan wanted to recruit me. Valendrian said as much, it was why he desperately moved up the date of our wedding, so that he couldn’t recruit me. It made me wonder if in that moment, he had seen an opportunity to conscript me and took it. Lending two boys who barely knew how to wield a weapon for a rescue mission from an arl’s estate.”

“It would seem my earlier statement about the two of us not being the products of a happy life was more correct than I had expected, and don’t worry my dear Warden, your secret is safe with me.”

She beamed at him and leaned her head against his shoulder.

“Forgive me for saying… That I am glad you were conscripted, as trying to assassinate you turned out to be the best thing that has happened to me thus far.”

“You would say that wouldn’t you, Zev, and don’t worry, you’re forgiven, because I feel the same way.”.

He chuckled, he could easily picture her dressed like a boy picking pockets in the market district, learning to fight with her mother in secret, cutting her way through an arl’s estate, though he had seen her cut her way through the arl of Denerim’s estate already so it was not really all that hard to imagine. And now his warden had laid herself bare to him, so to speak, there were no more secrets between them. It also made him realize why she would only take his earring if it were a token of affection. She still wore another man’s wedding ring around her neck, so if he wanted to compete with that then he’d have to fess up to himself.

“Allow me to ask, Kallian, how does one know when one is in love?”

“My mother told me you know you’re in love when you imagine life without them, and you feel like you can’t breathe, like everything doesn’t matter anymore, like your chest is in so much pain and you don’t know what to do about it.”

He took in a sharp inhale of breath that luckily she didn’t notice because of her pleasant state of inebriation. He still carried that earring, and he thought perhaps, that it was time to set both their minds at ease.


End file.
